Social media among threats to greeting card makers

By Heather Hollingsworth

Sunday, October 7, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Say it's your birthday or you've just had a baby, maybe got engaged or bought your first house. If you're like many Americans, your friends are texting their congratulations, sending you an e-card or clicking "Like" on your Facebook wall.

Once a staple of birthdays and holidays, paper greeting cards are fewer and farther between -- now seen as something special, instead of something that's required. The cultural shift is a worrisome challenge for the nation's top card maker, Hallmark Cards Inc., which last week announced it will close a Kansas plant that made one-third of its greeting cards. In consolidating its Kansas operations, Kansas City-based Hallmark plans to shed 300 jobs.

Pete Burney, Hallmark's senior vice president who overseas production, says "competition in our industry is indeed formidable" and that "consumers do have more ways to connect digitally and online and through social media."

Over the past decade, the number of greeting cards sold in the U.S. has dropped from 6 billion to 5 billion annually, by Hallmark's estimates. The Greeting Card Association, an industry trade group based in White Plains, N.Y., puts the overall-sold figure at 7 billion.

Brian Sword, 34, of Kansas City, said he's "definitely" buying and receiving fewer printed cards than he did a decade ago, though he still prefers to send them to -- and receive them from -- a small group of close friends and family.

"I do think there are a lot of benefits and it does say more when it comes in a paper card format than when it comes even as an online greeting card," Sword said. "There's just something about receiving that card in the mail and opening it up and having it be a physical card."

Even the paper cards people buy have changed. Many people now use online photo sites to upload images and write their own greetings. High-end paper stores are attracting customers who design their own cards, sometimes using graphics software once available only to professionals.

"What Hallmark started with met the needs of the consumers in that early 20th century period to mass produce these personal greeting cards with art and poems and the only way you could communicate was by mail essentially," said Pam Danziger, who analyzes the industry as president of Stevens, Pa.-based Unity Marketing. "It's no surprise that in the 21st century with so many other communication vehicles available that the old idea of a greeting card being sent by mail just doesn't work anymore."

According to a U.S. Postal Service study, correspondence such as greeting cards fell 24 percent between 2002 and 2010. Invitations alone dropped nearly 25 percent just between 2008 and 2010. The survey attributed the decline to "changing demographics and new technologies," adding that younger households "both send and receive fewer pieces of correspondence mail because they tend to be early adaptors of new and faster communication media."

While Hallmark says it's committed to the paper greeting card, it has made changes over the years. It has an iPhone app, for example, that lets people buy and mail cards from their phones. It also partnered with online card service Shutterfly to share designs that consumers can use to build specialized cards online.

Its chief rival, Cleveland, Ohio-based American Greetings, actually went from trimming costs and jobs amid the recession to announcing in August that it's adding 125 workers to an Osceola, Ark., plant. It's part of an expansion that will allow customers to design their own cards -- online, of course.

"The most formal situations still require something written," she said. "The least formal are easily taken care of with texting or email, which is terrific. The idea that it has to be all one or all the other and that one method is totally out of date and the other one takes over until the next thing comes along just impoverishes the ways that we can use these different things."

Amanda Holmboe, a 25-year-old power plant quality control worker from Portland, Ore., has mixed feelings about the rise of digital communications. She said her friends email, text or post something on Facebook when something big happens in her life.

"More people know about my life and what's going on. I hear from more people, so in some ways I'm connected to more people, but it's a less personal connection," she said.

But Holmboe isn't giving up on cards.

"I love sending cards," she said, adding that she mails some from the cities where she travels for work. "I think they're fun, and I like being able to write a personal note to somebody because I like getting mail, so I guess I just think everyone likes getting mail."

Miss Manners on sentiments in the digital age

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- In an age when people can choose among text messages, email, Facebook and old-fashioned stamps and printed cards, the chance to use the wrong method when sending your very best is quite high.

What to do?

Well, AP went straight to an expert among experts: Judith Martin, author of the syndicated Miss Manners column, who offers guidance on dealing with the evolving etiquette of expressing sincere sentiments in an increasingly impersonal, digital world.

Her general advice is that formal events and intimate expressions require a handwritten note. But for more casual events and occasions, she gives people permission to send an email or text message greeting or even post to Facebook. Just keep it tasteful, OK?

Some of Martin's pro tips:

GETTING MARRIED? GET READY TO WRITE.

"People do still have very formal weddings in which case the invitations and the communication and the expressions of gratitude ought to be in keeping with that style."

NEVER EMAIL THE WORDS, 'SORRY YOUR MOM DIED.'

"You don't just dash off some casual thing on email. You sit down and write a real letter. Cards are a strange thing because they are in between. I've always been puzzled about why people spend hours selecting a card with a preprinted sentiment instead of just sitting down and writing a sentiment that they feel. It doesn't apply to Christmas cards or Valentine cards, where the picture is a great part of it. But to send, for instance, a sympathy card is the most impersonal way of reacting to something that is very deep and emotional."

ROMEO DIDN'T EMAIL LOVE LETTERS TO JULIET. YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER.

"I can't imagine that you can print out your electronic love letters and tie a pink ribbon around them and press them to your heart. And yet I've been asked, 'Is it OK to propose marriage by texting?' That would not exactly touch my heart if I were the object of that proposal."

DISINVITE THE E-VITE.

"If someone wants to see me, it seems to me that they can do it personally. If it's an informal party, send me an email. But I don't want to be part of a group that everyone can scrutinize who has been invited. What did this person say and what did this person say? I don't want to participate in a public group discussion about the party. Generally these people don't entertain in such large groups, except for weddings where they do send paper invitations, that they can't contact the individuals."

DON'T SEND AN E-CARD TO MISS MANNERS.

"A lot of them annoy people because they take a long time to download and for those who are sentimental about cards, they can't keep them in the same way. Are you touched, amused, charmed if you get an e-card and you are trying to work and you download it and it has probably loud music that your co-workers are turning around to see what it is? It is an inconvenience and not very charming."

ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO USE FACEBOOK TO WISH YOUR MOM HAPPY BIRTHDAY?

"Facebook has caused a lot of trouble because people don't realize that everybody sees it. Yes, you have privacy controls, but if one of your friends decides to send it on to someone else then you've lost that and it's there permanently. Now, I can't imagine getting in trouble by sending something nice to your mother but perhaps it contains a little zinger that you wouldn't want there permanently. And the amount of damage that people have done to themselves and others by posting things is enormous because these things are read by parents, perspective employers, by prospective lovers. People look and it's all out there. I don't think 'Happy Birthday Mother' does any harm, but you should watch what else you post."

KNOW WHERE YOUR FRIENDS ARE.

"You have to know someone's actual habits if you are going to reach that person. That's kind of a burden to have to know. This one doesn't answer the phone. This one doesn't check emails. I don't have a solution. I'm just saying that you should be familiar with the range of things that the people you want to reach or legitimately want to reach you use."